


The Syntax of Seduction

by thegrendel



Category: Original Work
Genre: Academics, Dating, F/M, Geeks, Linguistics, Persian Empire, Poetry, Rosetta Stone replica, Seduction, Seduction Chant, Seduction Secret, Sex Magic, Unintended Consequences, dance club
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-18
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-05-25 02:23:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14967077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegrendel/pseuds/thegrendel
Summary: In the shark-infested waters of the dating market, a balding middle-aged professor is dead meat.Until he finds out that's he's had the Seduction Secret all along.[Author's note: I consider this the best story I've ever written, stylistically at least. While I doubt that I reached the level of, say, a Ted Sturgeon, at least I'm in the ballpark.]





	The Syntax of Seduction

Can anyone be more lonely than a shy linguist?

Josiah Finn loved language more than life. To him the spoken and written  
word was a feast of complex intellectual delights. Studying linguistics  
gave his existence direction and purpose. It shielded him from the  
messiness of relationships with his fellow humans. It filled his hours and  
his days and provided him with everything he needed. Almost everything.

He was lonely.

He craved human touch. He needed the touch of a woman as a thirsty man  
needs water. He was slowly withering away in his abstract wonderland of  
intellectual delights.

Then he discovered Sassanid Dynasty love poetry.

The translations couldn't do it justice. Learning the old Persian  
dialects had posed no great difficulties for an accomplished language  
afficionado. The poetry, in its primordial, untranslated version, rang  
as clearly as a bell in the empty cathedral of his heart.

 

His previous attempts to approach women had invariably ended in disaster.  
They either laughed or totally ignored him. In the shark-infested waters  
of the dating market, a balding middle-aged professor is dead meat.

But the poetry, ah, those magic syllables, that hypnotic rhythm.

Some crazy impulse made him walk into a dance club. The Snakepit  
was a maelstrom of drifting blue cigarette smoke, mirrors, flashing  
multicolored lights, and loud heavy metal music that made meaningful  
conversation superfluous. He sat down at a battered wooden table two  
vacant chairs distant from a woman. She was a young dishwater blonde,  
still in her twenties perhaps, and she gave no sign that she noticed  
his presence. Or would have particularly cared if she had.
    
    
        This guy plops his fat butt down at my table. Dressed in a suit and
        tie, Coke-bottle glasses, missing half his hair. Older. Old enough
        to be my father. Geez, must be one of those prof types from the
        college. Ultra-nerd. Freaky. What's he doing here? Must have got lost.
    

He felt totally out of place. He _was_ out of place. What was he doing  
here anyhow? Sweating and feeling uncomfortable, that was what he was  
doing here. Get up and leave? Not yet, damn it.

 _The poetry. Remember the poetry._ Why? Maybe it'll take your mind off  
this damn nervousness. He began tapping the rhythm on the tabletop.  
The singsong syllables struggled to emerge from his larynx, then he  
set them free and chanted. First under his breath, then with growing  
confidence as the power took hold of him. The woman had turned around  
and was staring at him. Her eyes were . . . immense pools of darkness.
    
    
        He starts jabbering some kind of nonsense. Can't understand a word
        of it. Must be foreign talk. He has bad breath. Never mind. What's
        happening to me? I'm drifting off somewhere. Must have had too
        much to drink. I'm in a fog. The fog. The Female Fog, my ex used
        to call it. When my mind would sort of curl up and go to sleep and
        the Woman Beast in me would take over. That guy's starting to look
        pretty good. I could --
    

Her fingernails were digging painfully into his arm as she snarled at him,  
"Get me away from this friggin' place. Now. Take me home, damn you!"

She was a natural blonde. Unless had she dyed her pubic hair too. But  
he had no attention to spare for inane speculation because he had to  
maintain discipline. To keep chanting the poetry. Every time he stopped,  
she seemed to get distracted, to lose interest. Right now she was kneeling  
astride him, and the sight of his organ disappearing into the darkness  
of her, then emerging . . . made it hard to remember . . . the cadence  
. . . the syllables . . . but he had to keep chanting . . . or she'd  
lose interest . . . and leave him.
    
    
        What am I doing humping this guy? Don't even know his name. Can't
        stop. He has bad breath. His armpits stink. Never mind. It feels
        so good having him inside me.
    

They fell asleep in each other's arms, and when he awoke she was gone.  
The note read, "It was nice being with you, I guess. Best wishes." He  
knew he'd never see her again. Somehow it didn't matter.

 

Josiah had been having problems with his department head at the school.  
She was a dried-up old prune in her late 50s who seemed to have nothing  
better to do than to harass him in a variety of petty ways and turn down  
his grant requests.

"Pro-fes-sor Finn. Certainly you are familiar with the old adage that  
scholars either publish or perish. Based on that criterion, you are  
perilously . . . perilously close to perishing, I'm afraid. If your  
research fails to yield at least three published articles in the coming  
academic year, then you might well consider taking up something you are  
better suited for. Selling used vehicles comes to mind."

"Dr. Martinette, with your indulgence, I would like to demonstrate that  
my research is indeed bearing fruit. Kindly permit me to read you a brief  
selection of poetry from the Sassanid dynasty."

He shouldn't have been surprised to find out that Petunia Martinette was  
a virgin. At her age, too. My, my. But that hadn't seemed to diminish  
her passion any. She had left deep gouges on his back and bite marks on  
his neck.

How would she feel about him now? He desperately needed her good will  
and patronage. His livelihood depended on it. How could he bind her to  
him securely and irrevocably?

"Petunia, my pet, let me love you in a very special way . . . " (Pause to  
chant a few quatrains of poetry) "This will bring you to a peak of rapture  
attained by only a select few. It must remain a dark secret between just  
the two of us. Now get on your hands and knees and lower your head."

Doing her in the back passage caused her momentary discomfort when he  
entered, but the _chant_ relaxed her back into a receptive trance state.  
She was moaning with pleasure by the time he disengaged himself from her  
rear aperture.

"The pleasures of sodomitic love, my love. Now we are forever entwined."

Her eyes were distant and dreamy as she smiled at him and sighed. She  
was his, his alone . . . and he need never again worry about his next  
paycheck.

 

Four dozen women later, Josiah had refined and elaborated the details  
of the seduction system. Certain combinations of sounds chanted in a  
particular cadence induced a hypnotic state in "receptive" women. It  
needn't be ancient Persian poetry. It didn't even have to be any kind  
of poetry at all. It was the tone and the rhythm that did it, that  
neutralized the brain's higher thinking centers.

It worked on lonely women, vulnerable women, women with unfulfilled needs  
for affection, for touching, for simple sensual release. Such women were  
abundant -- all too abundant as it turned out. Josiah had long since  
had his fill of flesh and lust and sloppy, wet couplings. Now he just  
wanted to be left alone to pursue his studies of his beloved linguistics.

He wasn't left alone. Women constantly approached him, bothered him,  
_hounded_ him. The only explanation he could come up with was that  
he had unconsciously assimilated the "magic" seduction cadence into  
his speech and manner. Or maybe it was his new-found reputation as a  
demon lover. The only remedy he could think of was to seclude himself,  
to avoid human contact.

It was the cleaning lady who did him in. She was a 40-year-old divorcee  
with three half-grown children and an annoying habit of snapping her  
chewing gum while she talked. She had a quick and lively intelligence,  
to be sure, but her tastes were rather low-class.

She was dusting the bookshelves in Josiah's study one afternoon when  
she happened to jolt against his tape recorder. It clicked on and began  
playing back his transcribed notes.

Seduction? Hypnotizing people into sleeping with you? Suddenly, Maybelline  
Bumpus, afficionado of soap operas and avid devourer of romance novels,  
became intensely interested. She rewound the tape and began mouthing  
sequences of peculiar nonsense syllables over and over.

 

Josiah Finn awoke in the arms of a woman who looked oddly familiar. Last  
night was a blur. All he remembered was coming home and finding the  
cleaning lady still there. Had she broken one of his Rosetta Stone  
replicas yet again? (Clumsy woman!) Had he forgotten to pay her for the  
week? (Too many things to remember!) No, but she had cocked her head  
sideways and smiled at him with a strange glint in her eye. She was  
missing a couple of front teeth and this gave her a vaguely predatory  
appearance. She had said something. What? Nothing he could recall.

She was awake now and smiling at him. It was the same gap-toothed smile.  
It was, in fact, the cleaning lady who was sharing his bed. _His bed!_  
Had they made love? (He was sticky down below.) _They had made love!_  
She was saying something. No, chanting. The seduction chant! He felt  
himself disappearing into a black hole as his consciousness began to  
fade. A savage, mindless lust was taking possession of him. He had to  
have this woman! He had to lose himself in her! He had to . . .

 

Mrs. Maybelline Bumpus Finn is fiercely protective of her husband. She  
respects his need to devote himself to his studies and research, free  
from the distractions of dealing with people. She screens his visitors  
very carefully. Women have an especially hard time getting an appointment  
with the professor. Attractive women have no chance at all.

Mrs. Finn is an eminently practical person. She understands her husband's  
need for an occasional tryst with the department head. It's a matter of  
job security. But she knows he'll always come home to her. After all,  
she speaks his language.

**Author's Note:**

> The inspiration for this story was a work by sf writer, Robert Sheckley, The Language of Love (Galaxy, May, 1957). I liked the premise, but not the execution. The plot of my story in no way resembles that in Sheckley's.


End file.
